Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor wades in to embryo research debate with Catholic meeting

Posted by Kendall Harmon

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has begun an unprecedented attempt to block new laws on embryo research by contacting all Catholic MPs in a personal lobbying campaign.

The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, has invited them to a reception next week to discuss in confidence “issues likely to come before the House in the new session of Parliament”.

MPs say that the move signals a shift towards a more outspoken political role for the Church.

They told The Times that the event was the first of its kind and clearly triggered by the current legislation on fertility treatment and embryo research and by further debates on abortion law, which are expected next year.

It is not unreasonable for the Christian Church to ask its members to act like Christians. A Christian politition may very well have to choose whether to act like a good Christian or a good politition. There may be times when these match and there may be times when they collide.

What!? Firm beliefs on morality and ethics! Actual proclamation of those and expectation that they should be followed by self-labelled believers in the Tradition? It remains, as Dorothy L. Sayers observed nearly a century ago, that the Roman Catholics, poor things, were actually expected to believe Church doctrine. I am delighted they still hold to that system.

The abandonment of Christian moral and ethical teaching gets one here: http://www.rcrc.org/about/members.cfm
O for the days when one could argue about how many embryos can be killed in the name of science on the head of the pin of “progress”. But that is not possible in the ECUSA/TEC because of the curial acts of the Executive Committee unresponsible to General Convention or the HOB.